Patman
Staff member
A lot of cars are like this and they still get their cats stolen. That isn’t that much of a hindrance to a criminal
Catalytic converter theft
- Thread starter OilStained
- Start date
LA?
Happens everywhere I suppose. But location, location, location
Happens everywhere I suppose. But location, location, location
You can easily spend $10k replacing a stolen cat. That may render the car totaled by the ins company. Not all of us can take that kind of a hit right now.
The added sad frustration is the recyclers/junk yards can't sell a used one either. Yes, you have the chance that it's bad, oil contaminated etc.
I jus bought a fender for my daughters car, the doner vehicle was same year, same color, with only 75k miles on it. It got slammed in the left rear and totaled. It would have been perfect to unbolt and stick on hers.
I jus bought a fender for my daughters car, the doner vehicle was same year, same color, with only 75k miles on it. It got slammed in the left rear and totaled. It would have been perfect to unbolt and stick on hers.
Adding more details. I’m in the San Gabriel valley area, about 30 minutes east of Los Angeles.
Belly shield.
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Patman
Staff member
You would be surprised at how many people have garages full of so much stuff that they can’t park a car there. I lived in a nice neighborhood in Oakville that also happened to have one of highest rates of car theft. You would think that would be enough to convince people to clean out their garages but it wasn’t. There were even a few people who had their car stolen and then a few weeks later had the new replacement stolen too! I have no sympathy for people like that who were warned not to keep their desirable vehicles parked outside but still didn’t listen
Rhodium. Today's spot price is $ 10,950 per ounce. Also platinum and palladium.
Basements are very rare in North Texas, and homes prioritize living space, so the garages tend to be “Texas basements.” A neighbor a few houses down has a 3 car garage- one is used as a woodworking shop, one is used for a gym, and one is used for storage. The parents park their cars in the driveway, and the 2 driving kids park their cars on the street curb.You would be surprised at how many people have garages full of so much stuff that they can’t park a car there. I lived in a nice neighborhood in Oakville that also happened to have one of highest rates of car theft. You would think that would be enough to convince people to clean out their garages but it wasn’t. There were even a few people who had their car stolen and then a few weeks later had the new replacement stolen too! I have no sympathy for people like that who were warned not to keep their desirable vehicles parked outside but still didn’t listen
On a separate note- when I worked in precious metals recycling over a decade ago, there was a bit of irony that one of my coworkers got his cats stolen off his 3rd 4Runner in the office parking lot.
I tried it once....3AM and brain still foggy from just jumping outta bed. They ran me down and I went up over the car and broke a toe off when I landed. **** that. I'll ignore it from now on or just shoot from the porch.
Everyone says "just call your insurance"....yeah, well...that's probably why it costs me $3800 to insure 2 vehicles this year. The insurance companies would probably be money ahead hiring private security to patrol every neighborhood, rather than paying claims out constantly due to theft.
Circa '04 one of my closest friends worked for City of ABQ. One of the maintenance guys was taking FRESH sticks of copper pipe to the scrapyard on the lumber rack of a CITY truck.
To their credit, the yard was suspicious and called the City. The guy lost his job.
When the catalytic converter was stolen from my wife's Honda Element in 2022 in broad daylight during the lunch hour in a busy office park, the insurance company wanted to total the SUV due to the $4300 estimate for the dealership to replace the entire exhaust system because they cut through the one-piece muffler assembly. I took a reduced payout and replaced everything myself from the exhaust manifold back (including both oxygen sensors) to avoid a total loss. Since the OEM cat. was $2800 and nationally backordered for 18 months, I installed a Walker EPA cat. and invested in an Axion cat. shield. I painted the Walker cat. with Hi-Temp paint, etched the VIN, and mounted the stainless steel Axion shield with 6 different style fasteners (e.g., Torx, Phillips, metric hex, 5-pt. Star, non-removable, one way security head, etc.) to deter easy removal. Anything can be stolen with perseverance, but this would take more than 45 seconds with a SawZall.
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Garage is for tool storage.
Garages in this neighborhood is anything but, including housing.
Platinum and palladium prices are high.
Just replace it with a pipe.
Just replace it with a pipe.
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- Dec 7, 2022
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I am a retired electrical contractor and I had to do all that at the local scrapyard to be able to drop off scrap wire, metal etc. I had to show ID every time and they had to call me every time an employee used the account.
When I used to work the thefts, I learned quite a bit about catalytic converters. Most cats on average have very little PGMs (platinum group metals) that are the desirable part of the matrix. Platinum and palladium around 5 grams each on average and even less rhodium at 1-2 grams. A smaller vehicle would have about 10 grams of PGMs and a large truck nearly 20 grams. Priuses were targeted a lot because they had 4 converters.
The truck rental places got hit hard all of the time as did the school day care places that had their our fleets of small buses. One place welded cages around the cats and then welded those to the frames. Thieves just used more blades and cut through the cages. They hired security to watch the fleet and that turned out way cheaper than replacing the converters. They also didn't have them stolen anymore.
But most thieves are dumb. And drug fueled desperate ones even dumber. Had many thieves that left evidence in the form of blood, clothing, skin and even one that cut off parts of his fingers. Pretty easy to track him down, DNA was in CODIS. My favorites were the meth heads that would try to steal copper wire off of live electrical lines. Justice was shockingly quick
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The truck rental places got hit hard all of the time as did the school day care places that had their our fleets of small buses. One place welded cages around the cats and then welded those to the frames. Thieves just used more blades and cut through the cages. They hired security to watch the fleet and that turned out way cheaper than replacing the converters. They also didn't have them stolen anymore.
But most thieves are dumb. And drug fueled desperate ones even dumber. Had many thieves that left evidence in the form of blood, clothing, skin and even one that cut off parts of his fingers. Pretty easy to track him down, DNA was in CODIS. My favorites were the meth heads that would try to steal copper wire off of live electrical lines. Justice was shockingly quick
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